Archive of Our Own ^beta

I am writing to inform any who wish to attended the academy, to in fact not do so. The Jade Mountain Academy is all but revered as a place of learning for all the dragons of Pyrrhia. As a student I feel that I must tell you the secret that such a place harbors. I’ll leave my name out of this but I assure you that you would not recognize it if you saw it. The secret is one I know about only, no other dragon knows this. Let me tell you that it is an abhorrent secret, I feel you will not believe me if I tell you it plain. Instead I will recount the events of my discovery of it.

It was about half into my third year at the academy when the events started. To give time a point of reference; the, in my opinion, heavily overconfident Darkstalker had been defeated about two months before hand. The events of such a day to me are vivid as they are cloudy, but that is not why I write. My point is that I thought that I had seen the most aberrant things that day. But as I said I was wrong. I sat in history class the first time it happened. As any student knows the history cave is dingier and darker than the rest of the academy. And as any student knows the teacher, Webs, is lethargic in his instructing. As Webs muttered to himself I felt a sudden feeling of something crawling up my back. I assumed it was my imagination that had, in its desperation to stimulate me due to the monotonous stream of words coming from the SeaWing, conjured up something random for me to truly care about. I swatted at my back with my wing to rid myself of the false feeling. But the feeling stayed, in fact I felt the feeling move its away up to my neck. My heart beat raced as I frantically moved my claws around my neck to the rid the feeling away from me. It did not work. I felt the crawling move up to my head and then I felt a pressure on my eyes trying to push them into my skull. I screamed in abject fear and in my haste nearly clawed my own face. I was stopped as the class to noticed my display of madness. As there eyes and words turned to me I felt the feeling go away. My breath was heavy, my chest heaving as I looked around at the eyes that had turned to me.

“Is every thing all right?” The question came from the teacher. I nodded and said,

“Yes I just...scared myself. I’m alright.” He looked at me with his tired and sickly eyes before turning back to the board. Whispers than through out the class room as necrophagous pests run throughout a mass grave. The dark and clammy atmosphere of the room did not help me in the slightest. It made me feel sick, all the words about me and ugly moisture that stuck to my scales. The class soon ended and so did the first incident. It was about six days later when the second incident happened. I was about a mile or so away from the academy when it happened. It was night, the sun had wheeled below the horizon just a half-hour before. The sky was colored in dark blues that were quickly fading to black. I’m a star gazer by nature and I thought it would do me good to look upon my unearthly friends. That night as I lay stretched out on the grass and gazing at the pin pricks of light and the black vault that they peered through, I felt a small feeling on my right hind leg. I assumed it was a bug or some other animal but when I looked to the source I saw nothing. Even in the faint wisps of light of the gazing stars I should have seen something. But nothing was there. I reached down to scratch and rid myself of the itch which had placed itself on my ankle. I scratched at it but nothing happened as I did; the feeling stayed. A spike of fear ran though me, my heart nearly seizing as I realized what was about to happen. I felt that horrid crawling feeling work its way slowly up my hind leg and reach my lower back. In a fit of frenzy I thrashed around and screamed, rolling around as if I had caught aflame. As I mindlessly lurched and wrothe like a dancer of torment I damaged my own body. I felt tendons strain and sunder and my scales chip. My greatest folly was when, in that maddened state, I made a small cut on my left side with one of my claws. In that moment of the cut I felt the crawling halt. Then, in a second, the feeling rushed to the cut and I felt my wound part as something squired inside. I screamed as if I saw the heavens fall to earth. I felt the feeling moved up my body, pushing around my insides and making its way up. I felt it in my guts, then my chest, then on my spine. I felt sharp jolts of pain as my spine felt like it was being latched on to. I passed out due to pure fear. I woke to find myself walking back to the academy in the morning sun. Rather I woke to my body walking back. I could only see and hear and feel what my body did. I could not control it. I saw myself reach the academy and enter in. I was greeted by those who I knew, but my body simply nodded and went walking along past them. Any student knows that Jade Mountain has a number of passages and caves. Some lead to classes, others to sleeping areas, and some to underground lakes and spots students have made their own. What no student knows it that there is a passage that lies in a dark corner of a hidden cave that sits adjacent to a completely unwalked corridor that I shall not give the location to. I saw my body walk this path and come the passage entrance. The hole was small, about two-thirds my size. My body did not care. I screamed in my mind as I felt my body squeeze down the through the hole. Bones started to break and muscles rent to mush. The pain was so powerful, so wretched, that I felt control return to me. I ripped my self out of that hole and rushed, as best I could, out of Jade Mountain. Luckily his wings remained intact so he was able to fly fast and away. He hopes that he’ll be able to get the message out of what happened here. He wants to warn all others to stay far away from Jade Mountain.